by Graceling
He looked at her then, rubbed his eyes, and squinted at her, hard. “The king,” he said thickly. “The king. My arrow. The king is alive.”
Katsa’s heart sank. For now they must flee, all three of them, with Po in this state and with only one horse. In the dark and the cold, with little food, and without Po’s Grace to warn them of their pursuers.
Her Grace would have to serve.
She handed Po her flask. “Drink this,” she said, “all of it. Bitterblue,” she said, “help me pull these wet things together. It’s a good thing you slept today, for I need you to be strong tonight.”
Po seemed to understand when it was time for him to mount the horse. He didn’t contribute to the effort, but he didn’t fight it, either. Both Katsa and Bitterblue pushed him up into the saddle with all their might, and though he almost pitched headlong over the animal and fell to the ground on the other side, some unfocused understanding caused him to grasp Katsa’s arm and steady himself. “You behind him,” Katsa said to Bitterblue, “so that you can see him. Pinch him if he starts to fall off, and call me if you need help. The horse will be moving quickly, as quickly as I can run.”
Chapter Twenty-seven
IN THE DARK on the side of a mountain, no one can move quickly who doesn’t have some particular Grace to do so. They moved, and Katsa did not break her ankles stepping blindly before the horse, as others would have, but they didn’t move quickly. Katsa barely breathed, so hard was she listening behind them. Their pursuers would be on horseback, and there would be many of them, and they would carry torches. If Leck had sent a party in the right direction, then there would be little to stop them from succeeding in their search.
Katsa was doubtful that even on flat land they could have moved much faster, so unwell was Po. He clung to the horse’s mane, eyes closed, concentrating fiercely on not falling off. He winced at every movement. And he was still bleeding.
“Let me tie you to the horse,” Katsa said to him once when she’d stopped at a stream to fill the flasks. “Then you’d be able to rest.”
He took a moment to process her words. He hunched forward and sighed into the horse’s mane. “I don’t want to rest,” he said. “I want to be able to tell you if he’s coming.”
So they weren’t completely without his Grace; but he was completely without his reason, to make such a comment while Bitterblue sat directly behind him, quiet, intent, and missing nothing of what was said. Careful, she thought to him. Bitterblue.
“I’ll tie you both to the horse,” she said aloud, “and then each of you can choose whether or not to rest.”
Rest, she thought to him, as she wound a rope around his legs. You’re no good to us if you bleed to death.
“I’ll not bleed to death,” he said aloud, and Katsa avoided Bitterblue’s eyes, determining not to talk to Po inside her mind again until his reason had returned.
THEY CONTINUED south slowly. Katsa tripped and stumbled over rocks, and over the roots of stubborn mountain trees that clung to cracks in the earth. As the night wore on, her stumbling increased, and it occurred to her that she was tired. She sent her mind back along the past few nights, and counted. It was her second night without sleep, and the night before that they’d slept only a few hours. She would have to sleep, then, sometime soon; but for now she wouldn’t think of it. There was no use considering the impossible.
Several hours before dawn she began to think of the fish she had caught earlier, the fish scaled and gutted, and wrapped and bound with the bags to the horse. Once light came they wouldn’t be able to risk even the smallest fire. They’d eaten very little that day, and they had very little food for the next. If they stopped now for just a few minutes, she could cook the fish. She wouldn’t have to think of food again, until the next nightfall.
But even this was risky, for the light of a fire could attract attention in this darkness.
Po whispered her name then, and she stopped the horse and walked back to him.
“There’s a cave,” he whispered, “a few steps to the southeast.” His hand swayed in the air and then rested on her shoulder. “Stay here beside me. I’ll lead us there.”
He directed her footsteps over stones and around boulders. If she’d been less tired, Katsa would have taken a moment to appreciate the clarity with which his Grace showed him the landscape. But now they were at the entrance to Po’s cave, and there was too much else to consume her mind. She must wake Bitterblue, untie her, and help her down. She must get Po from the horse and onto the ground. She must find wood to build a fire, then get the fish cooking. She must dress Po’s shoulder again, because it still bled freely no matter how tightly she bound it.
“Sleep while the fish cooks,” he said, as she wound clean strips of cloth around his arm and chest to stanch the flow of blood. “Katsa. Get some sleep. I’ll wake you if we need you.”
“You’re the one who needs sleep,” she said.
He caught her arm then as she knelt before him. “Katsa. Sleep for a quarter of an hour. No one is near. You won’t get another chance to sleep tonight.”
She sat on her heels and looked at him. Shirtless, colorless, squinting from pain. Bruises darkening his face. He dropped her arm and sighed. “I’m dizzy,” he said. “I’m sure I look like death, Katsa, but I’m not going to bleed to death and I’m not going to die of dizziness. Sleep, for a few minutes.”
Bitterblue came forward. “He’s right,” she said. “You should sleep. I’ll take care of him.” She picked up his coat and helped him into it, moving his bandaged shoulder gently, carefully. Surely, Katsa thought, they could manage without her, for a few minutes. Surely they would all do better if she got some small sleep.
So she lay down before the fire and instructed herself to sleep for only a quarter of an hour. When she woke, Po and Bitterblue had barely moved. She felt better.
They ate quietly and fast. Po leaned back against the cave wall, eyes closed. He claimed to have little appetite, but Katsa had no sympathy. She sat before him and fed him pieces of fish until she was satisfied that he’d eaten enough.
Katsa was suffocating the fire with her boots, and Bitterblue was binding together the remaining fish, when he spoke.
“It’s good you weren’t there, Katsa,” he said. “For today I listened to Leck prattle on for hours about his love for his kidnapped daughter. About how his heart would be broken until he found her.”
Katsa went to sit before him. Bitterblue shuffled closer so that she could hear his whispered words.
“I got through the outer guard easily,” Po said. “I came within sight of him, finally, in the early afternoon. His inner guard surrounded him so closely that I couldn’t get a shot at him. I waited forever. I followed them. They never once heard me; but they never once moved away from the king.”
“He was expecting you,” Katsa said. “They were there for you.”
He nodded, then winced.
“Tell us later, Po,” Katsa said. “Rest for now.”
“It’s a short story,” he said. “I finally decided my only option was to take out one of his guards. So I shot one. But the instant he fell, of course, the king jumped for cover. I shot again, and my arrow grazed Leck’s neck, but only barely. It was a job meant for you, Katsa. You’d have hit him squarely. I couldn’t do it.”
“Well,” Katsa said. I would never have found him in the first place. And even if I had, I would never have killed him. You know that. It was a job meant for neither of us.
“After that, of course, his inner guard was after me,” Po said, “and then his outer guard, and his soldiers, too, once they’d heard the alarm. It—it was a bloodbath. I must have killed a dozen men. It was all I could do to get away, and then I rode north, to throw them off the track.” He stopped for a moment and closed his eyes, then opened them again. He squinted at Katsa. “Leck has a bowman who’s nearly as good as you, Katsa. You saw what he did to the horse.”
And he would have done the same to you, she thought to him.
If it weren’t for your newfound ability to sense arrows as they fly toward you.
He smiled, ever so slightly. Then he squinted at Bitterblue. “You’ve begun to trust me,” he said.
“You tried to kill the king,” Bitterblue said, simply.
“All right,” Katsa said, “enough talking.”
She returned to the fire, and smothered it. They pushed Po up into the saddle again, and again she tied her charges to the horse. And in her mind, over and over, she warned Po, implored Po, to stop announcing aloud every little thing his Grace revealed to him.
IN THE LIGHT of day they moved faster, but the movement was hard on Po. He didn’t complain once about the bouncing of the horse. But his breath was short and his eyes flashed with a kind of wildness, and Katsa could recognize pain as easily as she recognized fear. She saw the pain in his face, and in the tightness of the muscles of his arms and his neck whenever she dressed his shoulder.
“Which hurts more?” she asked him in the early morning. “Your shoulder or your head?”
“My head.”
A person with an aching head shouldn’t be riding an animal whose every step reverberated like an axe to his skull; but walking was out of the question. He had no balance. He was forever dizzy and nauseated. He was forever rubbing his eyes; they bothered him. At least the bleeding of his shoulder had slowed to a dribble. And talking no longer confused him; he seemed to remember, finally, to hide his Grace from his cousin.
“We’re not moving fast enough,” he said several times that day. Katsa, too, chafed at their pace. But until his head improved, she wasn’t going to run the horse over the rocky hills.
Bitterblue was more of a help than Katsa could have hoped. She seemed to consider Po her special charge. Whenever they stopped, she helped him settle onto a rock. She brought him food and water. If Katsa stepped away for a minute to chase a rabbit, when she returned Bitterblue was cleaning Po’s shoulder and wrapping it in clean bandages. Katsa became accustomed to the sight of Po swaying above his little cousin, his hand resting on her shoulder.
By the time the sun began to set, Katsa felt the fatigue of the last few days and the last few sleepless nights. Po and Bitterblue were asleep on the horse’s back. Perhaps if Po rested now, he would be able to stand some sort of watch later and give her some few hours’ sleep. The horse, too, needed rest. They couldn’t stop for the whole night, not when they traveled at this pace. But a few hours. A few hours’ rest might be possible.
When he woke again in the moon’s pale light, he called her back to him. He helped her find a hollow in a ring of rocks that would hide the light of a fire. “We’re not moving fast enough,” he said again, and she shrugged, for there was little to be done about it. She woke Bitterblue, untied her, and slid her down from the horse. Po slid himself down, carefully.
“Katsa,” he said. “Come here, my Katsa.”
He reached for her, and she came to him. He wrapped his arms around her. His hurt shoulder slow and stiff, but his unhurt arm strong and warm. He held her tight, and she held him steady. She rested her face in the hollow of his neck, and a great sigh rose within her. She was so tired, and he was so unwell. They weren’t moving fast enough. But at least they could stand with their arms around each other, and she could feel his warmth against her face.
“There’s something we need to do,” he said, “and you’re not going to like it.”
“What is it?” she murmured into his neck.
“We—” He took a breath and stopped. “You need to leave me behind.”
“What?” She pulled away from him. He swayed, but grabbed at the horse to steady himself. She glared at him, and then stormed after Bitterblue, who was collecting branches for the fire. Let him cope for himself. Let him make his own way to the campfire if he was going to make such absurd statements.
But he didn’t move. He just stood beside the horse, his arm clutching the animal’s back, waiting for someone to help him; and tears rose to her eyes at the sight of Po’s helplessness. She went back to him. Forgive me, Po. She gave him her shoulder and led him across the rocky ground to the place where they would make their fire. She sat him down and crouched before him. She felt his face; his forehead burned. She listened to his breath and heard pain in its shortness.
“Katsa,” he said. “Look at me. I can’t even walk. The most important thing right now is speed, and I’m holding you back. I’m no more than a burden.”
“That’s not true. We need your Grace.”
“I can tell you they’re seeking you,” he said, “and I can promise you they’ll continue to seek you, as long as you’re in Monsea. I can tell you they’re likely to find your trail, and I can tell you that once they do, the king will be on your heels. You don’t need me with you, to repeat that over and over.”
“I need you to keep my mind straight.”
“I can’t keep your mind straight. The only way for you to keep your mind straight is to run from those who would confuse you. Running is the only hope for the child.”
Bitterblue came beside them then, with an armload of sticks and branches. “Thank you, Princess,” Katsa said to her. “Here, bring the rabbit I caught. I’ll build the fire.” She would think about the fire, and she would pay Po no attention.
“If you left me behind,” Po said, “you could ride fast. Faster than an army of soldiers.”
Katsa ignored him. She piled twigs together and focused on the flame growing between her hands.
“He will catch up with us, Katsa, if we continue at this pace. And you won’t be able to defend either of us from him.”
Katsa added more twigs to her fire and blew on the flames, gently. She piled sticks on top of the twigs.
“You have to leave me behind,” Po said. “You’re risking Bitterblue’s safety otherwise.”
Katsa shot up to her feet, her fists angry and hard, suddenly beyond any pretense of calmness. “And I’m risking yours if I leave you. I’m not going to leave you on this mountain, to find your own food and build your own shelter and defend yourself when Leck comes along, when you … you can’t even walk, Po. What are you going to do, crawl away from his soldiers? Your head will feel better soon. You’ll get your balance back and we’ll move faster.”
He squinted up at her then and sighed. He looked into his hands. He turned his rings around on his fingers.
“I won’t get my balance back for some time, I think,” he said, and something strange in his voice stopped her.
“What do you mean?”
“It doesn’t matter, Katsa. Even if I woke up tomorrow completely healed, you’d have to leave me behind. We’ve only one horse. Unless you and Bitterblue ride the horse fast, you’ll be overtaken.”
“I’ll not leave you behind.”
“Katsa. This isn’t about you or me. This is about Bitterblue.”
She sat down suddenly, the strength knocked out of her legs. For it was about Bitterblue. They’d come all this way for Bitterblue, and she was Bitterblue’s only hope. She swallowed. She made her face expressionless, for the child must not know how much it hurt her to rank Bitterblue’s safety above Po’s.
And then she knew suddenly that she was going to cry. She held her breath steady and didn’t look at him. “I’d thought to get a few hours of sleep,” she said.
“Yes,” he said. “Sleep for a bit, love.”
She wished that his voice was not so soft and kind. She wrapped herself in a blanket and lay beside the fire with her back to him. She commanded herself to sleep. A tear trickled over the bridge of her nose and down into her ear, but she commanded herself again.
She slept.
WHEN SHE WOKE, Bitterblue slept on the ground beside her. Po sat on a rock before the crackling fire and looked into his hands. Katsa sat with him. The meat was cooked, and she ate it gratefully, for if she ate she did not have to talk, and if she talked she knew she would cry.
“We could get another horse,” she finally managed to say. She stared at the fire, a
nd tried not to look at the lights that glowed in his face.
“Here, at the base of the mountains, Katsa?”
All right then. There was no other horse.
“Even if we could,” he said, “it would be ages before I could ride fast enough. My head won’t heal while I’m rattling around on a horse. It’s best for me, too, Katsa, if you leave me behind. I’ll recover faster.”
“And how will you defend yourself? How will you eat?”
“I’ll hide. We’ll find a place, early tomorrow, for me to hide. Come, Katsa, you know I hide better than anyone you’ve ever known, or heard of.” She heard a smile in his voice. “Come, my wildcat. Come here.”
There was no helping her tears. For they would leave Po behind, to fend for himself and keep himself alive by hiding, though he couldn’t even walk unassisted. She knelt before him, and he took her into the crook of his uninjured arm. She cried into his shoulder like a child. Ashamed of herself, for it was only a parting, and Bitterblue had not wept like this even over a death. “Don’t be ashamed,” Po whispered. “Your sadness is dear to me. Don’t be frightened. I won’t die, Katsa. I won’t die, and we’ll meet again.”
***
WHEN BITTERBLUE WOKE, Katsa was packing their belongings. Bitterblue watched Katsa’s face for a moment. Then she watched Po, who stared into the fire.
“We’re leaving you, then,” she said to Po.
He looked up at the child and nodded.
“Here?”
“No, cousin. When morning comes we’ll search for a hiding place.”
Bitterblue kicked at the ground. She crossed her arms and considered Po. “What will you do in your hiding place?”
“I’ll hide,” Po said, “and recover my strength.”
“And when you’re strong again?”
“I’ll join you in Lienid, or wherever you are, and we’ll plan the death of King Leck.”
The girl considered Po for a moment longer. She nodded. “We’ll look for you, cousin.”
